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Why are we being forced to complete the signature questline in order to zone into the heroic zones now? I was planning on doing the signature quest eventually but not on launch when it is completely camped and lagged out now we are all forced to do a 5-6 hour (with nobody else there) questline in order to essentially do anything in the expansion?!? This needs to be changed, at least allow some of the zones to be accessed without doing the questline so we have something to do with a group on launch day.

Agree; seems like an artificial way to extend the lifetime of instances and will just be annoying to most players. I don't quest unless it is absolutely necesarry for some end-game reward. I won't be doing any heroic zones if this goes live; it's hard enough to justify playing outside of raids as it is.

meh.. doing the quest for sky was sorta fun. but yea like fel said.. these things better work.. no bugged camp mobs or anything like that please. also make it possible to zone in people if you have access but others don't like sky.

meh.. doing the quest for sky was sorta fun. but yea like fel said.. these things better work.. no bugged camp mobs or anything like that please. also make it possible to zone in people if you have access but others don't like sky.

I liked the skyshrine quests very much, there were great rewards, it was a group questline to access group content, and with the exception of harvestables it was to kill very generic very abundant mobs. Now they are solo quests with junk rewards (minus end rewards) and most mobs are barely abundant enough to complete a quest for 1 person let alone a zone full of people. Tbh if this is the way the devs want it to be, make the mobs respawn in 30s and split instances at 20/25 instead of the ~50ish it is now.

p.s. (unrelated to davngr's comment) I've completed all of Obol and am currently bugged on Puzzle Pieces in jungle so I know first hand how long and tedious these questlines are even with a 95 recklessness stance sk doing big roundups and basically 1-2 shotting everything.

I cannot believe we are going to repeat this mistake. I thought we had learned this lesson before. In EQ1, the Planes of Power expansion had nearly every zone locked behind access quests, and what was the result? The result was a massive exodus of the player population. Do not repeat this mistake. I thought Sony knew better by this point.Zones should not be locked - we should be free to go to the new zones on launch day.

*taken from EQ2 Wire, Mechanics Panel from Fan Faire*Q: Are we going back to Chelsith to level to 95? A: Solo, Quest, and Group XP will be more appealing than going back to Chelsith.

Between the above quote, the gated zones, and this thread, I suspect I won't be leveling ANY of my characters in new zones.If you want us to do quests, make them worth doing - do not try to force us to do them.Solo zones should give 1500 EXP per kill, just like they did on Day 1 of Beta. Heroic Zones should give 3000-6000 or more per kill, and they should be accessable on Day 1 of Live, and be accessable by everyone.

I cannot believe we are going to repeat this mistake. I thought we had learned this lesson before. In EQ1, the Planes of Power expansion had nearly every zone locked behind access quests, and what was the result? The result was a massive exodus of the player population. Do not repeat this mistake. I thought Sony knew better by this point.

Actually, in EQ1 most of the recent expansions had the majority of zones locked behind access quests. In both UF and HoT you had to complete the access missions for each tier to gain access to the next tier. DoDH, SoF and SOD had access quests for the end zones as well. GoD had a lot of access quests for higher end zones.

None of those expansions caused "a massive exodus of the player population". Neither did PoP. The expansion that killed it in that era was LDoN, that was the one that bled out players and the reason was lack of unique content, not locked zones.

I like the access quests for the DoV launch zones. Only 1 group member needs access, and I think the first zone in each string of "3" was unlocked auto anyway.

This isn't like a new thing, and it gives you something to do. I don't see the big fuss.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the second part of your post but the big fuss is that at least DoV allowed you to do SOMETHING, ALL new heroic zones in CoE are gated I have no problem with some zones being gated or even behind a heroic access quest. The problem I have is forcing people to do several hours of solo quests that are going to be insanely camped on launch just to do any new group content.

I would have to agree that launch day (and even the week or two after) is going to be a mess with so many people all trying to do the access questline at the same time. This was definitely not a good decision.

Sleeper's tomb doesn't appear to be locked pending a signature (I can enter in all versions of it and I'm gated on the last signature from EJ). All the other timelines are working fine now (except for the last broken predicate on Drinal's Steward that should be fixed from what Zoltaroth said) and they always worked very well in Obol Plains.

Group dungeon seem to allow the group to zone if one people has the timeline done.

Access quests are fine. Access quests that are broken on purpose (DoV) or where hundreds of players are competing for updates from the same mobs on launch day (CoE) are not. This is a stupid move, artificial delays to access will not disguise lack of content.

Alhtough I am not completely against access quest but as I play on a pvp server they are almost impossible to complete with large guilds camping all the choke points (which makes for great pvp, but not so great for getting into the zones) and that means most of the content will be unavailable to small guilds and those that solo. The other item as has already been stated is lag and a lack of quest mobs and even in a large zone completing the quests are far more difficult for soloist and small guilds.

On a brighter note: on a pvp server we can kill those who wish to take our mobs and pvp will be stupendous!

I completed the entire Sig quest line and got me a very nice cloak and title. I had very little problems with the entire quest, with the exception of one NPC that did not have the "quest feather" in one camp, and quest appeared dead, till I started hailing all the quest people, and finally got the continuation one. Other than that, it went off without a hitch.

I know people want to get right in the dungeon get that loot for themselves and start selling it to others in auction, but I really did enjoy the questline, as it progressed me from area to area, zone to zone, dungeon to dungeon with a purpose, not like mindless repetition of dungeons over and over. If you don't do the sig questline, you will find this expansion..... quite boring.